QR are excellent and I rate them on par with Emirates. Get all the SC’s and benefits and Doha is a great place to visit on a stop over.
Cathay are usually around $6k in J to Europe but if you have the time have you considered going via DPS?
QR often have great fares from DPS or CGK to Europe at under $4k and a cheap J return from PER-DPS can be under $1200.
If your alliance or airline doesn’t matter EY has some fares from CGK to Europe for under $3k
I’ve had one great experience with FC where I was on a six month RTW trip and the agent went above and beyond to track me down in South America & advise me of some flight changes.
Otherwise I agree, they are generally pretty poor, and expert price gougers. Probably depends on the individual agent to an extent. I’d still use them ahead of an online mob, but I wouldn’t pay much more to do so.
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Anyone use the hotel loyalty programs?
MARRIOTT is busying my balls right now
LeClub Accor Platinum member and they look after us amazingly. Have a very good range in Europe and Asia and in Asia especially the staff go out of their way to look after you.
What is wrong with the Marriott program?
I’ve heard plenty of good stuff about them.
Hilton Honors will status match me to Diamond but I haven’t bothered joining them yet
Holy Moly! The price comes down to about $8k for 2. Talk about the “Australia Tax”!
+1 for Accor. Also I am platinum with IHG but they do not do as well as Accor. Have been Diamond with Hilton, but their program is nowhere near as good as Accor.
It’s not just the Australia tax. The ME airlines are trying hard to dominate the world market and get market share throughout Asia. DPS, CGK and MNL are often considerably cheaper than other Asian ports. WY are a brilliant airline who often have fares in J to Europe for around $2k from CGK and QR had them for $1800 about 6 months ago. We fly to CGK quite a bit as the best reward availability is also through there.
Thanks! That was a great tip. Usually I do not have any spare time due to work commitments, but I can spare an extra day or so this time.
Not so much at the hotel. I just ordered a heap of vouchers to spend at Marriott hotels. They didn’t turn up (via email) but I’ve spent 2+ hours on the phone, probably spoken to a dozen different people and no one has an answer.
Not off to a great start after the data breach a while back. They were helpful when I rang, but then never followed through on anything they promised.
Ha - Not there for it (although I’m sure some of the Blitz posts would be well received…) but we did get the afternoon off to attend it. Like a lot of art, there’s stuff you like and stuff you don’t and and then there’s stuff you have no idea what it’s meant to be or be saying.
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This mirrors my experience with them since the merger.
I was SPG gold for years for 5 years prior to the merger and they were great. Good reward availability and the best spread of quality hotels across North America with a good selection in Asia. Whenever I had to call them they sorted out issues quickly and often without penalty even when they were entitled to charge or penalise me.
Since the merger, they’ve devalued their rewards program so you need more points to get a reward night and I’ve had several issues with their customer service which were never resolved.
The first was staying in one of their Melbourne hotels and their free parking (which came included with the room) didn’t work so I had to pay to leave the parking lot. Not only did they blame me for paying and not coming back and getting it re-validated (apparently I was meant to park my car at the exit gate with cars lined up behind to come back into the hotel to do this). No amount of following up has resulted in a refund of this amount despite numerous assurances that they would refund it.
The second and last time was for our trip to Fiji earlier this year. I booked two rooms through my (not online) travel agent and they refused to give me points for the stay or status credits. This was despite the fact that they have credited the points and status credits over the previous 6 years for the numerous bookings I have made through my agent. All they could say was that it was their policy but they could not explain why they had given points and status credits in the previous 6 years.
That’s fine if you are going to start enforcing that policy but it would have been nice to know beforehand. What got me worked up was the “we don’t care” attitude when I called them about it. That’s fine but if you don’t care about my $10k-$20k a year in business then why should I have any loyalty to you?
Accor is good especially for Asia and Europe (I have just tended to stay more in North America where their presence is limited). I have always found IHG to not have great hotels where I stay. I am Hilton Platinum for the first time this year (branching out given my fall out of love with SPG) and have a Singapore stay at the Conrad coming up. Will let you know how the experience goes.
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Gee Danang looks very developed compared to when I was last there in 2001
Chinese have purchased most of the beachfront for about 15km and there is close to 40 new hotels going up. It’s amazing the difference each time we go back and the change from our first visit in 2009 is staggering so I can only imagine how different it looks from 2001. The infrastructure still isn’t there for the tourism boom especially the influx of Koreans who are visiting in droves
Ouch.
Industrial tourism ruins places, but we are part of the problem when we ‘discover’ somewhere special & new. Its a tricky thing.
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Agree, we are part of the problem. These places are great but Bali, Phuket etc have been ruined in places by tourism and I can see Vietnam heading the same way. There are 4 direct flights a day from Korea to Da Nang including 2 jumbos a day. The roads and infrastructure just can cope
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Ha, these two shots combine very well. For a moment my brain saw one image and couldn’t work out what was going on (and I’ve been there).
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Yes it’s the ‘hmmm not my problem, can you call this other number…or email this address and they’ll get back to you in 7 TO 10 DAYS!!!
I’ve just been nagging them on the comments form online, limited to 250 characters, so gotta be pretty creative.
It’s ‘only’ points that I’m using to buy $400 US in vouchers. But it’s probably cost me $200 in time and phone calls just to be fcked around.
Easily the worst customer experience I’ve had in 20 years of corporate travel.